


A Small Respite

by vmprsm



Series: LC Destin [9]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Existential conversations, F/M, Foreshadowing, Major Original Character(s), Starkiller Base, but it made me feel nice, life in the first order, really this is just moving the plot forward at a snails pace, snowy forest, so its fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 14:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10164761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vmprsm/pseuds/vmprsm
Summary: Hux and Destin meet unexpectedly in the officer's lounge. They talk, they learn.





	

_  
_

If we go down then we go down together  
They'll say you could do anything  
They'll say that I was clever

1600\. That perfectly horrible time of day in which duties were almost over but you felt too tired to finish them. Destin sighed to herself as she trudged into the officer’s lounge.

The room was a small affair, with decently comfortable couches and dimmer lighting, a place for the very few officers on Starkiller to unwind in what little time they had. It was usually empty, to be honest. There was too much to do. Conveniently, it also had twenty-four hour caf available, and it was for this reason Destin had made a detour on her way to the main cam feed room. She didn’t know what it was about ducts, but they had slowly become the bane of her existence. The techs could not figure out why but the surveillance cams in the yet-unfinished ductwork of Starkiller did not want to work properly. And of course, it was her job to figure it out.

Destin made it all the way to the caf machine and then halfway to a seat in the corner before she noticed him. She may not have noticed him at all if he’d left his cap on. But the shine of his slicked back hair under the lights, almost a burnt golden color, caught her eye like little else would. 

Why was General Hux hanging out in the officer’s lounge?

Now, it wasn’t that there was anything wrong with it, he was obviously an officer too, but the fact was, Hux didn’t make a habit of hanging around anywhere. He was usually either working or sleeping, and had made such an aloof figure of himself in doing only those two things that lounging around anywhere looked strange. 

But there he was. The only other person in the room, seated at a smallish round table with a half-circle booth and crouched over presumably his own datapad, hat set neatly to the side and a cup of caf just like her own steaming on the other side. His legs were crossed at the ankle, stretched out under the table. As she watched, he rubbed his forehead in what looked like frustration. 

She turned to face him more fully, and built up her fortitude. Destin could watch him for hours, but she was no voyeur, she would toughen up and go say hello. 

Pacing across the room, he didn’t look up until her shadow fell on the table. When he did, he only raised an eyebrow. “Destin.”

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Afternoon.” He replied. His eyes flicked down to the datapad and back up. He looked vaguely uncomfortable. 

“Ah, if what you’re working on is sensitive, I can leave. I thought you may desire company.”

“It...it isn’t.” Hux said, unsure. “I’m simply trying to manage this issue.”

Taking his response as something almost like an invitation, she set her cup down on the table, still standing opposite. “Might I help?” She looked down at the pad, and saw a map that had ‘N’ neatly written on one side with an arrow. “What is it? Those look like shield buster cannons.”

Hux moved his hand as if to cover the image, but stopped. “They are. A massive tree root system was found where the eastern cannon was supposed to be placed, and so it is either spend more resources to dig it out, or move the cannon locations.”

After a moment to digest the information, slowly Destin narrowed her eyes. “I wasn’t aware of the issue.”

“No, you were not. It was routed to me.”

“General, are you taking my work?”

“Technically,” he said, looking not at her but somewhere over her left shoulder, “it is all my work.”

This was annoying in a way she couldn’t put her finger on. “Do you not trust me to handle it?”

“No,” he said.

She scrunched her nose in irritation. “With respect, I’m starting to think you don’t want to go back to the Finalizer.” 

He looked surprised. “Watch yourself, LC.”

“Well.” She said, feeling herself hit a wall. Protectively, she crossed her arms over her chest. 

“Well.” Hux replied. 

There was an awkward silence that left far too much time to start worrying. 

“Sir? Have I done something wrong with this project?”

Hux closed his eyes moment, then sighed as he opened them. “No, Destin. I am simply aware of your workload, and your hours, and since I am still here overseeing operations, I decided to take some of the burden upon myself.”

Their eyes met, and suddenly she was embarrassed. Day to day, it was easy to ignore the bags under her eyes, the hollowness of her cheeks, the heaviness of her step. But was it so obvious that she was tired? If she didn’t have to sleep at all, she wouldn’t, but as it stood she barely got enough to be functioning, and no personal time otherwise. It was her choice, but the amount of work and the short timeframe in which to do it did not make it any less likely to choose. Every damn night, Felix was giving her lectures on self-care, and every damn night she was sending the stupid droid to his corner in a huff. 

“You really don’t have to.” She muttered.

“Similarly aware.”

The conversational topic was closed. He was going to stubbornly shut her out verbally until she gave up. Destin clenched her fists a couple times, and then dropped her arms. “Can I sit with you then?”

He had already gone back to looking at the pad. “I suppose. I had assumed you would have somewhere to be.”

Shuffling into the booth as gracefully as she could, she came just shy of bumping shoulders with the General. “I do,” she said plainly, “but I haven’t taken a break yet today, and it can wait.”

Hux hummed quietly.

For a little while, they just sat like that. Destin set her chin into her hands, leaning forward to catch the datapad in her sight. She watched him tap around, looking for new configurations given the new ground penetration data. When he shifted, ten or fifteen minutes later, their hips and shoulders touched. He glanced at her, but she held still, affecting an undisturbed air. 

Then, very, very slowly, while he watched, Destin leaned her head onto his arm. Hux’s expression softened, just slightly, and he went back to work. 

-

“--stin? Destin.”

She snapped awake, flailing slightly. The lights above flicked back on, having apparently dimmed further while they sat still. Managing to smack her superior officer in the arm in her surprise, she scooted away quickly. “I’m so sorry!”

He quirked that same damn eyebrow at her. “Did you know you talk in your sleep?”

Red flushed her cheeks. “Ah, yeah, sometimes. Did I say anything strange?”

He shifted eyes away from her face again in that way that said he was avoiding the truth. “Mostly unintelligible.”

Destin ducked her head to cover the blush, and caught sight of her watch. “1550! How did I, did you, oh my stars the IE techs are gonna be pissed.” She dropped her head in her hands. 

Gently, Hux wrapped his fingers around hers and pulled them away. “Language aside, I handled it remotely. You have the rest of the shift off.” 

She looked up into his eyes, green like the forest moss of her homeworld, only a measly foot or so away. No, no, shake it off. 

“Thank you, but I’ve slept enough with this break. I can finish out my shift.” She disentangled their hands. 

“Destin, you’ve been assigning yourself fourteen hour shifts.”

“With breaks.”

“That leaves you ten free hours per cycle.”

“Eight for sleep, two for meals and hygiene.” She countered. “It’s not unreasonable.”

She could almost hear his frustrated growl as she stared him down pointedly. She continued. “Look, what I’m saying is I won’t fall asleep again. If anything, I’ll go to my quarters and write reports and handle remote requests until I get bored, then go back to my active shift. You might as well just let me finish as I please.”

Never in her wildest dreams did she think she would argue with a General of the First Order, especially not about something so trivial as her own well being. It really could only be a matter of time before he was promoted to General of the Army, given Starkiller was his brainchild. 

Arguing did not necessarily mean winning, however. Hux looked as if he would not budge until they reached a compromise. 

She relented. “Okay, I’ll take the rest of the shift off.”

Hux snorted lightly. “No you won’t. I trust your self-preservation skills about as far as I can throw you.”

“Is that a weird Outer Rim saying? But you’re right, I won’t.”

He pursed his lips momentarily. “Then I believe we are at an impasse.”

“Alright, so I can’t be trusted to go to my quarters and I can’t go back to my shift. Do we just sit here?”

“Possibly.” Hux lifted the edge of his datapad and dropped it back down. “I can do work anywhere.”

She threw her hands up halfheartedly. “Now that is hypocritical to the extreme.”

Hux shrugged languidly. 

“Alright, okay, so compromise. We both take a bit of a break, and do none of those things.”

“This is childish.”

“You started this,” she pointed out, “I’m just trying to finish it. I have a thought, so trust me?”

Hux closed the screen on his pad and tucked it in his coat. “Fine.”

Destin shuffled out of the booth, and he followed with marginally more grace. On her own pad she shot off a quick message and led the way out of the lounge. 

Halfway across the base, which granted wasn’t that big yet, was one of the hangars for the snowspeeders. The snowtroopers were a oft-unused but efficient trained type of soldier, and the usage of this planet for Starkiller had finally put them in their element. Almost all the troopers with the specialized training had been moved to the base. They didn’t do much yet besides train, manage their supplies and speeders, and take excursions out into the wilds per officers request and searching out potentially problematic wildlife, but they seemed pleased enough to be on site. 

“SP-2034.” Destin called out, and an unhelmeted trooper shimmied out from under a snowspeeder. Trooper designations weren’t difficult to figure out. SP corps was the specialized troopers. The 1000 numbers were for sandtroopers, 2000’s for snowtroopers, 3000’s for urban troopers, etc. They were given the rest of their number in advancement order. She wasn’t entirely familiar with other environmentally trained trooper types, but there was a whole register and legend on the First Order intranet. 

SP-2034 had a dark blue soft pauldron strapped across her chest, over her working clothes. Even in more casual situations, showing rank was considered a priority. 2034 ran the teams that went furthest into the wilds, and therefore had the most advanced training on survival. 

“Lieutenant Commander, good evening.” She smiled easily at Destin, but snapped to attention when she saw Hux. “General. My apologies for being underdressed. We did not know you would be coming here.”

At her admittance, several other working troopers stood up or turned around, moving into a salute. 

Hux looked simply tired. “At ease, troopers. I am not here for any official purpose.”

Destin stepped in verbally. “Yes, it’s alright, Selene. We wanted to borrow a speeder, as I said in my message?”

“Of course, LC. I was checking this one for you. It’s charged and ready.”

“Thank you.” She replied, and 2034 stepped away. Destin graciously gestured for Hux to board first, and he did so without an expression. She climbed in after him, settling into the driver’s seat, and as she started it up, the hangar door opened into a darkened tunnel, with lights sequentially blinking to life along the walls into the distance. Most of the base was actually built underground, save the spaceship hangars, weapon ports, and the bridge areas, so the ground vehicle tunnels sloped out and up until they breached the surface a good quarter to half mile away. With a little wave to 2034, they departed. 

Once the light of the hangar was a spot behind them, Hux spoke. “Why did you call her that.”

Destin glanced over, keeping the speeder straight with a lazy hand. “Who? Selene?”

Hux nodded.

“Well, that’s her nickname.”

“Troopers don’t have names,” said Hux, “they have designations.” 

This was shaky ground. The human rights issues of stormtroopers and clones was something that every New Republic child learned. Even if she wasn’t much interested in it, it did color how she acted. She chose her words carefully as they came up to the exit of the tunnel. 

“That’s true, but they do choose nicknames for themselves within their units, I’m sure you’re aware. It’s not exactly regulation, but the names are usually related to their skills as a trooper, are meaningful, and I’ve found I get better results with honey than vinegar.”

“I’m sure that phrase has some significance regarding the properties of the items?”

Destin did a mental double take. “Do you not know honey, vinegar, or the phrase?”

Hux frowned, and crossed his feet in the opposite direction. As they exited, they were buffeted by cold wind and a light smattering of snow. The planet was currently in its warmer phase, so the temperature wouldn’t cause frostbite to uncovered extremities, but it was still certainly an uncomfortable temperature to adjust to. 

“Well, vinegar is a galaxy wide product.” 

“So you’ve never had honey?”

Her question was returned with silence, and Destin knew not to dig too far. The history of the higher officers and descendants of the Empire was spotty and seemed generally dismal. Not bad, necessarily, but simplistic and directed. The Empire’s remains had run off to the Outer Rim, and not much was available out there in the way of luxury items. 

“Ah, well, honey is a sweet liquid-like substance made from small insects as food. So I meant-”

“Being kind gets better results than not.”

“...yeah.” 

“You are aware you outrank them.”

Destin flexed her fingers on the wheel. “Yes.”

“So you can order them.”

She steered them deftly around a rocky area in the landscape. “That is also true. Should I assume you’re about to ask why I bother being nice then? If so, I think all I can say is it is my New Republic upbringing striking me again. Somewhere along the line, I assume that my kindness can be returned, even if it’s in ways I don’t recognize.”

Hux’s reply was somewhat terse. “Kindness doesn’t keep order and win wars.”

Destin gave him a soft look, trying to let him know she was backing down. She didn’t bring him out here for an argument that could end up questioning her loyalty. “No, it doesn’t. But I don’t assume it does, and I endeavor to balance small kindnesses with strict commands, given that I haven’t had an issue yet. If you order it, I will change my management strategy. I do think, however, that while kindness doesn’t win wars, it can keep societies peaceful, and I would hope that would be the end result of the war itself. Instilling it early may have some benefit. Anyways,” she cleared her throat, having become cold from taking in the air by mouth, “I digress. It is to your discretion, of course, General.”

Keeping eyes strictly on the ground ahead, she didn’t see his expression, but heard his little “Hmm.” 

“Do you think I am too hard on my men?” He then asked.

That was territory she very much did not want to tread in, no matter how close they had become, and how freely she could speak. “I am not equipped to give an opinion, I don’t believe.”

“Then I wouldn’t have asked.”

By stars, he wasn’t going to let it go. “Then, Sir, I believe that there are different kinds of command, and what I may find too hard may actually be what is needed. I frankly don’t know the depths of your command requirements. I’m not even in the Army branch. I can only say you must be under tremendous stress, and as General, you were placed there for a reason.”

Another little “Hmm,” that could be interpreted as anything without being able to scrutinize his face, and Destin figured the conversation could be considered over. 

They drove another ten minutes or so in silence, the positioning system in the speeder blinking steadily as they moved. The treeline moved into something more true to its name as opposed to just a scattering of trees. She turned the speeder to scoot along the edge, and when it thickened into a true forest that led to a cliff face, she decelerated. 

Destin hopped out, leaving the vehicle idling as she tromped out into the thinned snow. Tree needles and bits of bark littered the white expanse. From her coat she pulled out a little handful of something and her datapad. Flipping it on, she navigated to the page as Hux stepped up beside her.

“So I’ve found,” she said, moving away from him with purpose and looking around in the snow, “that sometimes, seeing the thing you are trying to fix can be beneficial.” She then stuck one of the little things into the snow, and a thin beam of red light came up from it. 

Hux quietly, to her surprise, followed her around in the snow as she marched across the field and placed other little lights until four were lit, all in different colors. Standing in the middle, facing the cliff, she held out her pad. Hux took it silently. Across the screen was a map of their location, much like the one he had been looking at when they met earlier, with lighted dots where the cannons would have been placed. 

“I know you didn’t get it figured out yet, because I didn’t get a work order change form. So the cannons are about ten feet in diameter, round, and the root system is an issue for these two,” she pointed away towards the red and green lights, closest to the treeline. “So what if we just leapfrog them to the west? We obviously can't go north, unless you want to put them in the cliff wall but that isn’t really reasonable.”

“The concern with that is the cliff widens out on that end, and an enemy unit can use it for cover.” Hux replied, and pointed opposite her. 

She smiled a little. If they could still talk about work, then all was well for now. “I was thinking about that too, and…”

-

In a very cold thirty minutes, the sun was far in the north, in their eyes, and they had agreed on new placement for the cannons. Hux had admitted, reluctantly, that he may have moved on to her IE work simply because he had frustrated himself with the cannon logistics. She laughed, very gently. The man to design Starkiller getting stumped by cannons was strangely amusing, but it stood to reason that while he was brilliant, he couldn’t do everything, and she was the one with the advanced degree in that specific type of engineering. 

As Hux typed in the last few notes to the work order, Destin looked around. “Another hour or so until sundown.”

“Mhm.” Hux didn’t look up from the pad. 

Sometimes, getting him to take a hint was like talking to a durasteel wall. He was so focused normally that sometimes you could entirely surprise him by asking about or doing something off-topic.

That said, it would be easier to just do what she wanted and see if Hux would follow or be contrary. 

Really, night wasn’t too much colder than the day, so the setting sun did little to deter anyone who was already outside. However, it would be dark, as the planet had no moon to speak of. The hour she stated was a decently hard limit on anything humans needed to do.

That in mind, Destin went tromping off towards the tree line, leaving Hux in her snow dust. 

After a confused moment where she glanced back and he looked on as she walked away, he followed.

They ended up amongst the towering trees, branch-less bark for meters well above their heads in the still forest. Really, in this ecosystem of permanent cold there weren’t many small creatures, endothermic or otherwise, and the silence was violently punctuated by their boots through the heavy inches of snow. Tired of moving forward aimlessly, Destin leaned her back against a tree and looked back up at the sky, shot through with oranges and a bit of green. It wasn’t really so far from how home looked. For a moment she felt horribly homesick.

“I never understood the appeal of being outside.” Hux stated suddenly, and she looked down to see him peering closely at a patch of moss on the ground, probably newly sprouted from the allowance of the non-frigid temperatures. 

“Well,” she replied lazily, holding a hand up to contrast her pale skin with the darkening sky, “for me, it is a reminder of how small we are. In the grand scheme of the galaxy, we are but miniscule creatures. Our actions may affect one another and in a way even planets or entire systems, but one million years from now it will all be gone, and the trees will still be growing and the suns will still be setting.”

With a blink, she put her hand down abruptly, and her senses snapped back into place with all the force of the weight of her station. This wasn’t just anyone she was spewing out her existential feelings too, it was her superior officer. The sunset had made her sentimental and her tongue loose. Slowly, she looked again at Hux.

He was looking at her as if she were some new species. Her face colored slowly. 

Contemplative, he seemed to measure his words before speaking. “I could...see that reasoning. But in our effort, we must assume our effect could last a million years. Otherwise, it is worth our individual lives?”

Hux’s voice was sure, but questioning. Destin didn’t answer immediately, trying to puzzle out his meaning. Was he testing her, or was he really unsure? Likewise, would her answer have an impact on their relations? As the sun went down, so did her patience for the situation, and finding the right words seemed harder and harder. 

“Yes,” she said finally, she had to commit to something, “we must assume, as we cannot know what comes after.”

“Unless you’re one with the Force,” Hux replied bitterly. 

“Hmm?” She said smartly, the tense mood of the moment broken. She tore her eyes from the landscape to focus on the downturn of his mouth. Of course, when she decided to talk did he become unhappy again. Throughout all their negotiations on the cannons, he kept a neutral, thoughtful expression, but did not frown. 

He sighed. “What I mean is,” he moved over to her and leaned against the same tree, the trunk bigger than two of her arm’s width around, “the supposed precognitive ability of Force users. I was being sarcastic.”

“Supposed?” Destin didn’t question the Force as real or fake, as it was too far from her life to matter either way, at least until recently.

Her mind cast back to a few weeks ago, the meeting that she had been ordered to attend, despite the stitches still peeking out through her hair. Kylo Ren had been surly, his unmasked face set in what felt to be a permanent scowl as she entered the room cautiously. Caez sat beside him, and didn’t speak through the meeting, opting instead to push a datapad stylus across the table with the Force, affecting a bored attitude. Destin could see the line of tension in their shoulders, and noted how they refused to look at anyone. 

Kylo Ren had stiffly apologized for his apprentice, did not apologize for himself, and Hux proceeded to interrogate his co-commander about the incident. It had mostly been high-level jargon and bits of intel that Destin was generally not privy to. She did not take notes, only listened attentively and sat very close to her General, as if his aura would protect her from further physical injury. Kylo didn’t look at her either, and she couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed to or if he really did not consider her worthy of even a glance. It didn’t matter much either way. The only important information she had gathered from the half-hour’s conversation was Kylo saying “The weapon will be a success, and then it will fall. I have seen it. Beware where you place your loyalties, General.” He then spared a single shift of his eyes for Destin.

To this, Hux had snorted, and laid down his orders for the two, namely that they were not to set foot on Starkiller again without going through the proper channels to do so. “But you shouldn’t have need to come here again regardless,” Hux said, “don’t you have a map to find?”

His statement seemed to set off the internal bomb of Kylo’s patience. He violently stood from the table, shot a look to Caez, and stormed from the room. Caez looked between them briefly, and followed. 

“Well, it never gives you a clear picture, does it?” Hux replied in the now, scowling at a loose thread on his cold weather gloves. He picked at it futilely, the leather over his other hand sliding off the thin strand. “The Force says something will happen, however it never tells you how or when or why. What use is information if you cannot act on it to any effect? It is hard to believe it is any sort of future sight at all.”

“But the Force is real.” She said, head turned aside to look at him. Destin was a ‘see it to believe it’ kind of person, and until recently hadn’t seen the Force in action, had only seen the aftermath of Kylo’s tantrums. Those were not mystical, simply extravagantly violent. 

Dropping his hand in defeat, he turned his body to lean a shoulder to the bark facing her. “Yes. But a measure of its accuracy or ability or extent of its power has not been established. Throwing an officer across the room is a far cry from accurately predicting the future. It assumes the future can be predicted. I am not so sure.”

“I,” talking about throwing officers made her supremely uncomfortable very quickly, “I don't, it really doesn’t affect what I do either way. So...I suppose it doesn’t much matter. And, if you knew enough of the future to change it, wouldn’t what you saw not be the future anymore?” She shook her head. “It’s too philosophical for me. I’m made for the technical.”

With a sigh, Hux relented. “It is past us, it seems. I used to think nothing was beyond me, but Kylo Ren and his...posse prove me wrong.” He lifted away from the towering tree and wandered back out into the snow. They weren’t too deep into the forest yet, and the trees were far enough apart to let the light in. Dark was falling quickly now, and the last of the light streaked between the branches as shadows crawled away from the bases. The effect was beatific, as his hair blazed and his coat fluttered in a sudden breeze. Destin’s stomach turned uncomfortably at the startling feeling, and she shuddered with the same breeze. 

“Hux?” She asked, if only to break the image he was creating. Some days, he felt like royalty, but in the wake of Kylo Ren’s statement some weeks ago, it felt too much like some strange foreshadowing, and she was, again, too technical to be so poetic about a damn sunset.

He turned at the waist, and her stomach flipped again, feeling to make a three-sixty. This little break had been a mistake. 

Clasping his hands behind his back, he looked up at the sky again. For someone who spent so much time looking into space, he still seemed to carry such reverence for it. “Your dedication to this project cannot be denied,” he started, “and your command over those under you is unorthodox but clearly effective.”

“If you believe so, sir…” 

“Given the weight of your responsibility, and its likelihood to grow as we move forward with the Starkiller weapon, it would be only natural that your rank reflect your duty.”

Destin blinked, and wisely stayed quiet. Hux was going somewhere with this. 

The sky seemed to no longer hold his attention. He steadied back on her, and came up to bracket her between himself and the tree, still keeping a respectful distance. Her heart took up a rabbit pace. 

Abruptly, he stuck out his hand. “Congratulations, Commander. You’re being promoted.”

With a surprised snort that snuffed out her anxiety, she took his hand and shook it firmly. “Does the Admiral know?”

“Well, of course we still need to do the paperwork. It was more of the gesture.” 

As she watched, he smiled. They did not break the grip of their hands. It felt natural not to. 

“In that case, I will endeavor to live up to my new title. Thank you, Hux.”

“I wouldn’t give it to you if I thought you wouldn’t.”

“I’m starting to get that.”

She realized then tried to stifle her surely goofy smile, and Hux seemed to come back to himself as well. With an awkward shuffle, they stepped apart, and Destin stumbled back against the tree trunk.

“So, it's almost dark, uh, we should-”

“Get back.” They both moved to go to the speeder, and bumped sides. Destin laughed. With a gracious sweep of his hand, Hux gestured her ahead. 

The ride back was quiet, but comfortable, and for the first time since the violent incident in the hangar, she relaxed.

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes of possible interest:
> 
> SP-2034- Selene as in selenium, AN #34. Used in photocells, snowspeeders can be solar powered. It is a reference to her mechanical ability with speeders.
> 
> My version of Caezlo is in no way the canon from Chris. Just a reminder. I yoinked them unceremoniously and its our little secret, kay?
> 
> Since the whole scientific explanation of the Force got put down, Im gonna go with the idea that they just dont know how it works.


End file.
